Friday, 4 January 2013

Crystal Balls to 2013

Well no-one is going to be following any tips of mine after the 2012 debacle, I must have been in a very bad mood. CU was a little unkind because regrettably the burglary prediction was correct, but I have to admit the rest of the list looks pretty lame. Should have stuck to predicting the bullion ... (which last year I made a profit on - again - though it would hardly have been an interesting tip).As regards economic predictions. here's an excellent illustration of why mere mortals have difficulties these days, when governments are intervening so wildly. I rather like these half-serious tips: silver up, Japanese equities and fracking stocks down.So, much chastened, I'm going to stick to the precious metals for 2013 (silver really does look good - just MHO of course); and an elaboration of DK's call. He reckons we'll see preparations for rolling blackouts. I'll go one step further and predict actual rolling blackouts in Germany and more widely in central Europe as the dominos fall. Epicentre will be just north of the Alps. They won't be able to start up new coal-fired power stations quickly enough to prevent it.ND

Right - I didn't realise this was a proper comp so shall indeed fondle my balls and do a serious response over the weekend.

Just completely OT - but there's a nice little economic wheeze over on Alphaville (and, frankly, the commentards have jumped in to thoroughly disabuse the girl) but it's a lovely little vignette into future system management of government fundamentals which gives rise to a 3 pipe thinking game. Very nice.

go for it, Dick, there is glory to be had if you can emulate budgie last year

BE - Germany is the test-bed: they have installed so much wind and solar that grid-balancing issues often go critical

how they got through 2012 without a really severe incident is a miracle - the German grid regulator (and everyone else in the know) thought it would happen

as it was, they squeaked through with just some medium brown-outs, forcing industrial customers to interrupt, etc

the voltage in some place on the German grid is seriously unreliable and factories that need steady volts are being forced to provide their own, which doesn't say much for a leading 21st century economy

and things are getting worse by the month: & if it happens where I indicated (Bavaria), it will spill into FR, CH, AT, IT, all of which are heavily interconnected and inter-dependent

if it happens, Lives Will Be Lost ...

a bad way to discover the infeasibility of pandering to silly green plans

I love the fact that Germany is struggling with its own power grid. I remember when Heath decided to drag Britain into the EU because the Germans seemed to have it all sussed. Doesn't look like that now does it? The epicenter of the EU disaster spawned by Franco-German social democracy.

Sadly, much as I would like to be able to claim that Britain will suddenly come to its senses and leave European politics behind in 2013, I think it will take at least another 10 years, but probably more like 30 years (if indeed there is still a "Britain" at that time).

Still, I'm loving the slow-motion inevitability of it all. It is not so much "if" the whole thing implodes so much as whether it will be while my generation are in charge or when my kids generation get their hands on the controls. So I'm buying pop-corn futures as I sit back and watch it all unfold.